


the fire is coming

by feminist14er



Series: build this fire higher, higher toward the sky [1]
Category: Pacific Rim (2013), The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-01
Updated: 2015-03-01
Packaged: 2018-03-15 21:44:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3463130
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feminist14er/pseuds/feminist14er
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clarke's jaeger goes down on a Thursday.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the fire is coming

**Author's Note:**

> This was supposed to be a small little thing to get me started in The 100 fandom, and instead it's turned into the equivalent of two academic papers - oops? A giant thank you to allthingsholy for letting me use her idea: "i want a fitzsimmons pacific rim au where, like, they’re both at the jaeger academy (youngest pilot candidates since the beginning of the program) and don’t get along /at all/ but then get paired together for exercises and HOLY DRIFT COMPATIBILITY and so they become partners and fight a bunch of kaijus but fitz starts to develop feelings and jemma knows, of course she knows, she’s in his head all the time, and then there’s an /incident/ and fitz gets hurt and their drift compatibility cracks, like, it doesn’t work right anymore, the thing they’ve had forever, it’s broken, /he’s broken/, and then 50k words of a long slow burn toward finding each other again." I wrote something fairly different, and it's in the wrong fandom entirely, but she definitely gets credit for the inspiration.
> 
> Please, please be aware: this story contains references to suicidal ideation, PTSD, depression, disordered eating, and addiction. These are not strong themes in this work, but I would hate for someone to be triggered, so if these things are challenging for you, this might not be a good story for you. (Alternatively: have someone you trust read it first and let you know).
> 
> And of course, I own no part of either The 100 or Pacific Rim.

Clarke has been piloting jaegers since she was fifteen. The first kaiju attacks began when she was ten or so, and shortly thereafter, she and her father were paired together. They were drift compatible, one of the highest-ranking pairs working, and they were revered. Her father never let it go to her head, but Clarke knew that they were highly skilled, doing important work. It was important to her, particularly since her mother was the commander at their base, that she didn’t let anyone down.

Their jaeger gets hit on a Thursday, and all Clarke remembers is that the night before, she’d been angry with her father for telling her she couldn’t go out with her girlfriend. She’s angry with her partner, and her partner just happens to be her father, and it just so happens that he’s ripped right from the co-pilot seat, and she’s left to try and piece together everything that happens after that. She remembers her side being torn open, and she remembers screaming, crying as her father is dragged from the pilot seat, and she remembers very little after that.

Later, among the wreckage of her jaeger, half-dead, she realizes she must have reached land, which means she single-piloted it. Her mother never stopped warning her, and every other young pilot about the risks of single-piloting, telling her that it led to horrendous neurological damage, at the very least. Death was common. 

When she wakes up to two fierce women looming over her, their clear eyes showing concern, she knows she’s alive, but she can’t recall the rest. All she knows is that she’s far from home, and when they carefully roll her over to check her stitches, it rushes back to her in a flood, and she’s choking, shaking from the sobs as she recalls her father’s death, feels it wash through her brain again, feeling his every last agony down to the tips of her fingers. The two women try to roll her back over, try to comfort her, but she can’t calm down, can’t calm the grief and terror rolling through her body in waves. They leave her eventually, allowing the sorrow and guilt to wrack her body until she can’t breathe. Finally, she sleeps.

\--

She wakes two days later, the sun streaming weakly through the small window near her bed. She remembers where she is, remembers how she got here, and it takes her another minute to allow the horror of what is now her life to pass through her body. She realizes that she’s curled tightly in a ball, so tightly that her entire body hurts. She can feel the raking scrapes along her left side, but she can also tell that they’ve been well sutured and well cared for. She slowly begins to stretch out, trying not to whimper as her tense muscles uncoil. When she is able to stretch out fully, she takes a minute to stare at the thatched roof of the dwelling she’s staying in. She doesn’t know where she is, only knows where they dropped, somewhere in the middle of the Pacific. She could be anywhere.

One of the women, the one with the darker eyes comes to her side when she sees that Clarke is awake, and gently pushes at her to roll over again, allowing her to check the wound. Clarke takes a second to wet her mouth, before asking, “Where am I?”

The woman peers over her side before shaking her head and raising one finger. She moves away, and Clarke rolls onto her back again, flexing and contracting her muscles, feeling the jarring aches move through her bodies. She is alive. Her father is not.

The other woman comes over, and Clarke repeats her question. The woman responds, her voice steady “You’re in Washington. You washed up five days ago. When you’ve slept some more, we’ll take you to the wreckage.” She gestures behind her, and the other woman walks up with a bowl. “You need to eat, and then sleep some more. Anya and I will keep watch over you until you’re strong enough.” 

Clarke nods, then: “What is your name?”

“I’m Lexa. And you?”

“I’m Clarke. Clarke Griffin.” Lexa sucks in a breath when she hears Clarke’s full name, and Clarke is filled with a mixture of pride and bitterness. She is renowned. She and her _father_ were renowned. Without him, she is nothing. “Please, don’t contact my mother. I’m not ready to go back.” Pleading fills Clarke’s voice, and the truth is out before she’s even had time to think it through. Abby will think that Clarke is dead, along with her father, and Clarke doesn’t know how to deal with the whirlwind of feelings at that thought, but she knows she’s not ready to face her, not ready to deal with her pity. Abby will have no idea, and she will try to offer Clarke comfort, and she just _can’t_.

Lexa nods, then gently pulls Clarke upright before holding the bowl out for Clarke. She can barely grip the spoon she’s so weak, but she manages, her stomach roaring to life. When she’s done, Lexa lays her back down gently, covering her with the covers. Clarke is asleep again before Lexa leaves her side.

\--

Two days later, Clarke insists that the two women take her to the jaeger. The jaeger is the third partner in a drift, although few people think about it that way. The jaeger doesn’t possess the human mind that a co-pilot does, but it is a fundamental part of the neurological link, and Clarke is almost as attached to ArkAngel as she was to her family. She stumbles when she sees it, and all she can think is how broken she looks, this beautiful fighting machine that is part of her soul. The two women catch her, but Clarke can already feel the sobs building in her chest, and she drops to her knees anyway, feeling the visceral loss of her father all over again. She doesn’t know how she made it to Washington, and frankly, she’s not sure she wants to remember. She can only think that it was through brute strength and some innate human desire for survival that pushed her. She can’t remember the immediate feelings of grief that must have swamped her, and if this is how she feels now, she doesn’t want to feel those more intense feelings. 

She stays there, kneeling in the sand, tears pouring down her face, two women standing strong at her sides until she starts to shake with cold. Anya, who doesn’t seem to speak English, wraps a blanket around her, and together she and Lexa haul her to her feet before leading her back to their dwelling. 

She falls into the bed without a second thought, her body worn out from the walk and her outpouring of grief.

\--

She doesn’t go back to look at ArkAngel again. 

Instead, when she can hold her own bowl of broth, and when she can finally eat solid food, she runs the beach in the other direction, trying to make sure that she is strong enough to leave. She won’t go back to her mother. That door is closed. She will never have another partner again, and she doesn’t want the pity of the other pilots, of the engineers. Consciously or not, she’s forsaking her birth family and the family she’s made in the jaeger program. She just wants solitude.

Lexa and Anya, for all their rustic existence, do own a car. They drive her over bumpy, rutted roads into the remains of Seattle, where she uses her name to get a car. She turns to the two woman, and hugs both of them, thanking them silently for everything they’ve done for her, from nursing her back to health to keeping her identity a secret. They hug her back, and Anya hands over a daypack stuffed with warm clothes and food, before pressing her hand to Clarke’s shoulder with a smile. She and Lexa turn and melt into the crowd, no doubt back to their quiet existence. She doesn’t have a way to contact them, and she hopes for their safety in the ongoing chaos of the kaiju war.

With keys in hand, she throws her pack in the car and starts the engine before heading north.

\--

She drives for days without seeing anyone, and it starts to make her fidget. Maybe what she wants is not actually solitude, but she’s desperate for the anonymity she has been afforded in the past months. She has been in the spotlight since she was a teenager, her father and she making nightly news for their stunts and victories in ArkAngel. It helped, of course, that her mother was the Commander of the Eastern Pacific, and between the three of them, the Griffin name became common.

Now, she wants nothing but to leave it behind, melt into the background, and live a normal life. But there is no normal life now, just flashes of childhood memories from before the kaiju war. She wants those days back, but she knows better than to hope. She knew that, even before she lost her father, there were mutterings of concern from Jasper that the kaiju attacks were becoming more, rather than less frequent, and that the skill and strength of the kaijus was only increasing.

Two weeks after leaving Seattle, she reaches Anchorage. She had no idea that she was going to go toward the wall, but now that she’s here, she figures she might as well stay.

\--

Work on the wall is hard, and doubly so because she’s a small, young woman. She is as fierce and determined, however, as any of the men, and she’s small enough that she gets some of the jobs that they can’t do. She learns to weld, gets used to burns on her hands, and works the wall relentlessly. She’s tired at the end of the day, and she doesn’t have nightmares anymore. The exhaustion leads her to dreamless sleep, and if the atmosphere isn’t what she wants, she has retained her anonymity, and she has something to do to keep her occupied.

She’s been working the wall nearly five months, and she’s down on her break, slouched into her raggedy jacket, her hat smashed over her hair when she catches a flash of wavy brown hair. She’s seen it everyday since her birth, and the burst of fear that rushes through her leaves her short of breath. She isn’t here. She _can’t be_. 

But it turns out, she is. And she asks around enough days in a row to locate Clarke.

Clarke has managed to avoid her for five days. She knows that someone has been asking after her, but she hasn’t used her given name up here. Finally, her mother must resort to her description, and her boss points her out. Clarke isn’t there to see the wave of relief that washes over her mother’s face.

Her boss hauls her down, and it is only when she lands on the ground that she realizes why she’s been dragged down from her spot. Her mother is reaching out to her, tears in her eyes, and Clarke is flinching, backing away. She doesn’t miss the flash of shock and sadness that goes through her mother’s eyes. 

“Not here,” she hisses at her mother, stalking away. She doesn’t want the men to know who she is. She’s earned her place here, rather than being born into it, and she’s not leaving, so she can’t have it messed up.

Her mother dutifully follows her through the crowd, but it isn’t until they’re close to half a mile away from the wall and any person capable of hearing them that she calls out. “Clarke, honey. Stop.”

Clarke spins on her heel, facing her mother. “How did you find me?” 

Her mother steps back like Clarke has slapped her. “Clarke, I thought you were _dead_. Why didn’t you come home? You let me believe that both you and your father had been killed.”

“Come home to what, exactly, Mom? Pity? You can’t find me another pilot. Dad was it for me. And I piloted ArkAngel in by myself. I’m _damaged_ , right?” She doesn’t know why she’s angry with her mother, but suddenly she’s _furious_. “You have no right to be here. You have no idea what I’ve been through, and what it would have been like if I’d come home. I just wanted to be left _alone_.” She feels tears beginning to prickle at the corner of her eyes, and _goddammit_ , she doesn’t want to cry about this anymore, but every time she thinks of home, she feels her father being ripped away from her again, and she is always going to know how afraid he was, how awful his death was, and she can’t get past it, especially in front of her mother.

Abby’s face has crumpled in on itself, and Clarke feels a vindictive pleasure in making her mother feel even an ounce of what she’s been carrying with her for almost a year. Abby makes a move to reach out to Clarke, but she shrugs it off, backs a way, wipes the tears off her face with her scratchy mittens.

Through her tears, she can see her mother steel herself, close herself off to Clarke’s apparent callousness. “You were always welcome home, Clarke. And I’m hoping you’ll come. I want you to try again.”

Clarke snorts. “Try _again_? With whom? Why? This isn’t much, but at least it’s not wholeheartedly pointless.”

Abby looks at her, a measuring look that Clarke has never seen before. It’s the Commander look, she realizes. She’s rejected her mother, and now she has the Commander. “This is pointless, Clarke. Jasper has intelligence that suggests that there’s a final big push from the kaiju. We need you to fight it. You were the youngest pilot in history, and you were extremely talented. We need that. You can fight out there, or you can go back to this meaningless existence. But your father would want you to fight.”

Clarke feels that like a blow to her stomach, and her rage is back. “Don’t you tell me what Dad would have wanted. Don’t you _dare_ ,” she snarls at her mother. “You know nothing about Dad. Did you feel his terror when he was pulled out of the kaiju? Did you feel how the only thing he wanted in that moment was to protect me? Did you feel him _die?_ Don’t _ever_ tell me what Dad would want.” She turns around and storms past her mother, hair flying

“Clarke.” Abby calls out. “I’m leaving in two days. If you want to go home, meet me at the airport.”

\--

Clarke stews for the rest of the day, and the remaining evening. She sleeps poorly, tossing and turning for the first time in months. She doesn’t _want_ to go back, doesn’t want to face the scrutiny and the judgment of her peers and family.

She’s been piloting for five years, and her mother isn’t wrong. This damn wall is almost entirely purposeless. She knows the kaiju like the back of her hand, and she knows that this wall, or any wall, won’t be enough if Jasper’s right and they’re getting stronger. She knows how to fight them. She would almost rip open her back again before she wants to get into another jaeger (she wants her father, wants ArkAngel, wants everything she can’t have), but it’s familiar enough.

She doesn’t want to drift with a new partner, doesn’t want them to feel the horror she’s felt. Doesn’t want to expose herself again.

She goes to the wall the next day and hands in her card. She packs her ratty clothing into the same bag she trekked up here with, and heads to the airport. She forgets that her mother isn’t leaving until the next day, and charms the airport staff into letting her crash over night.

She walks up to her mother the next day without a smile and gets on the plane before her, sitting as far as possible from her.

It’s a long flight back to the hanger, and while she tries to spend most of it asleep, she spends an equal amount of time fidgeting, braiding her hair back, fussing with her worn clothing. She was always dressed nicely outside of the jaeger, and now she doesn’t remember when she last did laundry. She probably smells, her hair is greasy, and her back is all of a sudden twinging.

They land, and she wants to throw up.

She doesn’t. She collects her bag, straightens her spine, and walks out of the airplane onto the tarmac outside of the hanger. She barely has time to take a step before a blur is tackling her, holding her close, and she only has to breathe in to know that it’s Raven, her friend, and the mechanic who always handled ArkAngel. She tentatively brings her hands up and around her friend’s body, holding her as she shakes. She thought only about her own anonymity and pain, forgot that she had people she truly loved here, people who thought she was dead. And now – now, she’s back from the grave.

Raven finally pulls back, wiping surreptitiously at her eyes before she decks Clarke in the arm. “Never do that again. I never want to think you’re dead until I’ve _buried you_ , you idiot.”

Clarke grins, the feeling foreign on her face. She’s had no reason to smile since before her father died, and she’s not sure she thought she would again, thankless job on the wall and solitary existence that she led. She rubs her arm a little before grabbing Raven again in a brief hug. Raven isn’t much for physical affection, and neither is Clarke, really, but she’s finally happy to see someone, and she feels like celebrating her life, just a little bit.

\--

She’s taken to a new room. She told her mother she wouldn’t go back to her old room, in the same quarters where her parents lived. She’s placed with the other pilots, but she closes the door before she sees any of them. She’s been bombarded by Monty and Jasper, the two kaiju scientists already, and she loves them, but she can’t take any more human contact. She slides down the door as soon as it’s closed, sinking her head onto her arms. She’s home, but she’s not the same person, and she – she only feels overwhelmed, old, worn out. She’s twenty. She’s been fighting a war for five years, and she’s _tired_.

She’s just taken off her mittens and her hat, thrown her backpack on her bed when there’s a knock on the door. She sighs, but she opens it. And stares.

She’s human, all right? She’s good with anonymity, solitude, even, but there have been nights where all she wanted was physical closeness, someone wrapped around her, pressing her nose against someone’s chest and breathing them in.

And this man? She wouldn’t mind doing those and many more things with him.

“Clarke Griffin?” He looks at her skeptically, brows drawn tight together, mouth in a frown. There’s a spattering of freckles across his nose that’s distracting her, but her name forces her to attention.

“The one and only,” she says wryly.

“Commander wants you to meet her in the training room. And these are for you.” He shoves a stack of clean clothes at her before looking at her appraisingly with a smirk. Any appreciation she had for him before vanishes, and she grabs the clothes before closing the door. She doesn’t need the approval of anyone here.

\--

It is days before she sees him again, days full of strength training exercises and reacquainting herself with the hanger and its residents. There are some new pilots, but she mostly steers clear of them. There’s a handsome but intimidating bald man, bearded and tattooed, and his diminutive companion, dark-skinned and dark haired, her eyes fierce under Clarke’s scrutiny. They sit together, and from Clarke’s guess, they’re partners and _partners_. It’s not uncommon, but Clarke’s mother always frowned on it.

Clarke has always wondered if it’s because she wasn’t drift compatible with Jake Griffin.

She sees him sitting next to the dark-haired girl, a surly look on his face as he talks fast and quietly in her ear. She’s glaring at him, and finally slams her tray down on the table before walking off. He sits there a little longer, face stormy. He looks up to see Clarke looking, and his frown deepens. Clarke glances away, a hint of embarrassment flooding through her.

She looks back, and he’s gone.

\--

She sees him next in training, and he’s shirtless.

He’s every bit as beautiful as she would have expected, and he’s sparring with the dark-haired girl. Looking at them now, she realizes that they must be related. She’s pondering how they ended up here when she’s tapped on the shoulder with a staff, and she turns, glancing up into the face of the other man she’s seen with the girl.

He hands her one of the staves, and she accepts, settling into her stance. He’s much taller than she is, broad shouldered and muscled, and it’s been a while for her, but she’s pretty sure he isn’t going lightly on her. She can tell from the way he fights that they wouldn’t be compatible, but she enjoys sparring with him, and when she knocks the staff from his hand, she feels elated, like she used to when she was younger. She bows to him, then holds out her hand. “Clarke,” she says.

This brings a slight smile to his stoic face. “I figured. Lincoln.” She gives him a small smile at his recognition of her. She wants anonymity still, craves the silence she felt when she was driving north, but knows that she is glad to be among kindred spirits again.

“And your partner?” She asks, gesturing toward the dark-haired girl, who is currently beating back the other man.

“Octavia Blake. That’s her brother, Bellamy.” Lincoln glances at her, and she can feel the appraisal in his glance. She refuses to look back at him, keeping her eyes pinned on the siblings.

“Were they compatible?” She asks. Watching them, she can already imagine them co-piloting a jaeger together. It’s not uncommon for siblings to work together, but from the closeness she’s observed between Lincoln and Octavia, and the tension between the siblings, she thought that they weren’t working together. 

“They were. When I was recruited here from the Western Pacific, she and I started training together, and Commander Griffin tested us for compatibility. She and I ranked higher than she did with her brother, so they placed us together. Bellamy hasn’t had a co-pilot in three months.”

At his words, a shiver passes down Clarke’s spine. Did her mother come looking for her specifically because she already had an extra pilot? Is she expected to work with Bellamy? She doesn’t know him, isn’t sure from his attitude that she wants to.

Bellamy and Octavia end their session, and Bellamy’s gaze locks on Clarke’s. She can feel the challenge in it all the way across the room, and to her shame, it causes her to flee.

\--

She can’t avoid the mess hall or the practice rooms, because she’s trying not to be “the Princess”, and if she’s not the commander’s daughter, she can’t have food delivered to her, and she certainly can’t skip practice. Her back is pulling tighter every couple of days, and she finally has to go to Monty asking for something for it. He takes one look at it, blanches, and mixes up a cream for the scar. She says thank you tersely, and runs.

She literally runs into Bellamy, and she’s so distracted that she’s all but knocked on her ass. She wants to be angry, but instead she is humiliated. It’s her fault, and all she wants is to get out of this situation as fast as possible.

“What’s the rush, Princess?” He asks with a smirk, looking down at her.

She pushes herself to her feet, grabbing the salve from the floor, before responding, “Don’t fucking call me that.” She’s dangerously close to losing her temper, she can tell, and she takes a breath before looking up at him. He’s still smirking, but he’s looking at what she’s got in her hands, and his face is softening. It makes her angry just thinking he’s pitying her. 

“And don’t feel badly for me, either.” She stomps off, missing the irritation that flashes on his face.

\--

Her mother calls her into her office two months into her stay at the hanger and tells her it’s time for her to find a partner. She is going to have officiated, scored sparring sessions, and her mother will choose her next co-pilot.

The morning of, Clarke is heaving into the toilet, nauseated at the thought of trusting someone to co-pilot with her again. She doesn’t even have to get into a jaeger for another couple of weeks, but the implications of the scored sessions don’t escape her, and the thought of drifting causes her to heave again.

She leans her head against the cool porcelain before wiping her mouth and standing up. She splashes water on her face and heads out.

She still feels ashen when she gets there, and as soon as she walks in, she spots Bellamy. He smirks at her from across the room, and she wants to hit him, wipe the smug smile off his face.

He’s her first opponent, and when he hands her a staff, he says “Looking pretty rough, there, Princess.”

She glares at him, feels hot anger coiling in her chest, and when her mother gives the signal, she attacks with a controlled fervor.

For the first time since her father died, she feels the singing in her veins, and she hates it. She does not want this man to be privy to her inner thoughts. She attacks harder, but he meets her every blow, and the smile on his face _grows_. She wants to punch him, but she won’t break formation, not yet.

And her mind is quiet, finally, her body going through rhythms it has been trained into since early childhood. She hasn’t felt this way since she started back, and as much as she hates Bellamy for being the one to draw her out, she is so grateful for the silence of her mind, the silence of everything around her.

Her mother finally has to stop them, because neither gains the upper hand. Clarke goes through the motions with seven other candidates, and though she’s sweating when she’s done, she knows. It will be Bellamy. She looks across the room at him this time, and he’s not smirking. He’s looking at her thoughtfully, and she nods at him when she leaves the room, only to have him nod back.

\--

It is Bellamy, and it’s her mother who comes to tell her personally. She nods, assenting. She’s not happy about it, but she’s not happy about sharing her experiences with anyone, at this point, and she knew when she sparred with him that it would be him.

After her mother leaves, another person knocks at her door, and she groans quietly before answering. To her surprise, Octavia is standing outside her door, her hair braided and her expression fierce.

“May I come in?” She asks. Clarke nods and moves aside. Her room is the same as everyone else’s, and she registers the surprise on Octavia’s face when she glances around. When Octavia turns back to her, some of the fierceness has dimmed, and Clarke feels both guilty and relieved.

“You’re going to be piloting with my brother, aren’t you?” Octavia, Clarke is realizing, does not beat around the bush. Her tone is verging on accusatory, and her thumbs are tucked into her belt.

“It would seem that way,” Clarke says. “Are you here to tell me to take care of him? I can’t guarantee it. I’ve already lost one partner.” Clarke doesn’t mean it as a joke, although in any other context it might be funny. She’s realized it’s better to be frank about losing her father in battle; she doesn’t want pity, and the direct approach seems to stave off that response. 

“I know you can’t. I’m a pilot too, remember? I want you to protect him. He’s good in battle, but you haven’t fought in a year. You’re unpredictable, and I’m frankly concerned that you can’t actually do it.”

 _Yes_ , Clarke thinks. _I am too_. Still, she says “You’re not wrong. But I was incredibly successful before the past eighteen months. The Commander thinks I’m ready.” She doesn’t miss the way Octavia snorts when she says “Commander”, but she doesn’t say anything, so Clarke assumes that Octavia has at least some respect for her mother.

Octavia looks at her, and there’s a small measure of respect in her gaze now, along with the disdain and the fierceness Clarke detected before. “He’s all I’ve got. He needs to come back to me in one piece, every time. I’m holding you accountable.”

“Seems like you have Lincoln, right?” Clarke asks. She’s not fishing, but she is curious at the wording of Octavia’s demand.

Octavia nods, but says, “Bell and I didn’t have it easy growing up. He practically raised me, and he’s the only family I have. I love Lincoln, and I will never have anything like I have with Lincoln with anyone else. But Bellamy is special.”

Clarke nods, and she isn’t cowed, exactly, but she understands. “It’s okay if you don’t trust me. But I will do my best to keep him safe.” Her insides squirm a little bit at the thought of keeping this man safe, this man who has mostly shown her disdain, but she knows. She knows that if they’re drift compatible, she will keep him safe. It’s her job.

She catches Octavia looking at her, and she wants to shrink. Her gaze is assessing, and Clarke’s not sure she passes muster any more. She’s damaged goods, even if her mother doesn’t think so, but she still doesn’t want the pity of this strong woman across from her.

Octavia doesn’t offer pity. She offers her hand instead, and Clarke finds she’s relieved to shake it. Hopefully she has Octavia’s respect, and she thinks, with that, possibly her friendship.

\--

Clarke hasn’t been in the actual hanger since she’s been back. She doesn’t know what she’s piloting, and up until this point, she hasn’t wanted to know. When she walks in, Raven runs up to her and tells her to look up.

It’s her – it’s ArkAngel. A wave of emotion threatens to overwhelm Clarke, and she is glad for Raven standing next to her, allowing her to lean, ever so slightly on her. She turns to Raven and hugs her, telling her how perfect it is.

When she climbs into the pilot seat, however, she almost has to sit down, the rush of memories is so strong. She fights through it, but she’s afraid to drift afterward.

She doesn’t have a choice. Her mother scheduled this first run, to establish the neural handshake, and she has to pull it together. Bellamy can’t see her like this, and she must restrain herself to make this work. She cannot chase the rabbit today.

She stands, dusts her hands off, and walks to the right side. She needs her left side protected, and she needs to trust Bellamy to do it.

He walks in, and while they say nothing, he nods at her, and when she meets his eyes, she sees none of the disdain she’s seen before, and she’s relieved for just a second. Then they step in, and wait for Raven and Wick to okay the neural handshake.

She’s pleasantly surprised, but it goes off without a hitch. She’s not sure how much of her past experience she’s able to shield from him; she’d learned to shield some of her thoughts from her father as she got older, while still establishing a firm neural handshake, and she’s desperate to believe she’s managed to do the same thing with Bellamy. For all she knows, he’s doing the same thing to her. Either way, they successfully get ArkAngel out of the hanger, and bring her back to the dropsite when Abby calls them in. Clarke feels a little bit ebullient when she gets out, although she’s afraid of jinxing anything.

\--

She and Bellamy start to eat together after that, and if they sit next to each other and don’t make eye contact, no one comments. Sometimes, they’re joined by Lincoln and Octavia, and at times, Monty, Jasper, Raven, and Wick. Clarke grew up in this hanger, so she’s known everybody as long as they’ve been stationed at Eastern. Bellamy, she’s surprised to realize, genuinely likes everyone, and has made the effort to get to know them.

When they’re not joined by the others, they’re mostly quiet. Clarke suspects that Bellamy is holding back, not sharing with her, but she doesn’t mind. She doesn’t feel like sharing either. They have a useful connection, but she doesn’t feel the need to probe it more deeply.

If it’s because she’s scared of losing another person, she doesn’t say anything about it, doesn’t show it.

\--

Their first attempt to bring down a kaiju is done in tandem with Lincoln and Octavia, and it is a success. It is so successful, in fact, that Clarke once again wonders if this is too good to be true.

It is.

Their second attempt starts out well. The kaiju is a category three, but both Bellamy and Clarke have successfully fought one before, and while they are always prepared and wary, this seems like something that shouldn’t be more difficult than usual.

Instead, there is a category two that emerges mere minutes after the category three, and the combination takes more strength and skill than Clarke thinks they have. When she recognizes that the category three has a similar style of fighting as the one she and her father went after at the end, she feels her grip on the neural handshake waver, and she knows Bellamy feels it. He looks at her, panic in his eyes, and he starts “Clarke-“

It’s too late. She can’t help it, can’t control it. She hasn’t had a major episode in months, but all of a sudden, she’s chasing the rabbit, and Bellamy is screaming for her to snap out of it, yelling that he can’t pilot alone, she has to come back to him. And she’s fighting to do just that, but all she can see, all _they_ can see, is her father being snatched out of the cockpit, and she’s screaming herself hoarse, tears streaming down her face, and all of a sudden, she feels it viscerally, and she’s snapping back to reality to realize that she’s left their right side vulnerable, and the category two has grabbed them, is slicing at her side, and now she’s crying in pain, and Bellamy is desperately fighting off the category three while she tries to get under control enough to use the right side effectively.

She does, but ArkAngel is torn open, she is bleeding heavily, and they are limping home when the copters fly in to get them.

She tumbles out of the cockpit, barely making it to the bathroom before she vomits, bile burning her throat.

Someone pulls her hair back from her face with one hand and dabs at her side with another.

“Shit, Clarke. You have to get up, we have to get you to a medic.” It’s Bellamy, and she is filled with shame and terror and it’s all she can do to shake her head before she’s heaving again. When she thinks it’s stopped, she collapses against him, and the last thing she remembers is his arms carrying her through the halls.

\--

She wakes up in the hospital, and her eyes barely open before she feels the nausea tear through her again. Someone is holding her hair in one hand, and a bucket in the other, and it takes her two minutes to understand the weight she felt against her was Bellamy, sleeping head down on the edge of her bed. Just as when she pulled herself out of ArkAngel, he is here now to help her, and she burns with shame all over again.

She closes her eyes against the nausea, and when it passes, she realizes she is still in a staggering amount of pain. She tries to roll herself back onto the bed, but her mind flashes white in agony and she is falling, crying out, and Bellamy is helping her to lay back, calling out for her mother at the same time.

Abby flies in, Jackson at her heels, and together they shove Bellamy to the periphery, easing her back and rolling her over to her left side, the side with the injury sustained when her father died, trying to ease her off her new injury.

She can feel the tears coursing down her face, and she’s desperately biting back sobs as her back contracts. Her mother is holding her hand, trying to soothe her, and Jackson is dabbing at the wound. She doesn’t open her eyes, prays Bellamy isn’t there to watch this, and with half her mind, she wonders why this hurts so much more than her last injury 

This is the last thing she remembers before a nurse gives her an injection that sends her into a heavy, dreamless sleep.

\--

When she wakes up again, she’s able to fight back the nausea long enough to croak out a demand for water. This time it is Raven by her side, lifting her up and allowing her to sip from the cup. Raven allows her exactly two swallows before taking the water away, and Clarke is grabbing for it, petulant, when Raven shakes her head. “Doctor’s orders. Minimal oral fluids for now – you’ve got a drip.”

Clarke looks over at her arm, sees the lines connecting into her veins, then looks back to Raven. And bless, her, she’s not looking at Clarke with pity. “You wrecked your jaeger again,” she says fiercely. “I can’t keep putting it back together.”

Clarke visibly flinches at this, and this is when she notices the pull in her side again. She hisses in pain, and Raven’s eyes widen. Clarke looks to her other side this time to see that whatever has been holding her right side together isn’t anymore, and she’s bleeding all over the sheets. The panic starts to build in her chest, and Raven is calling for Jackson again.

He comes running, swears when he sees Clarke’s side. She’s rolled over again, and while she knows not to fight him, has never been allowed to fight doctors (her mother is one, she has always demanded that her child is accepting of medical help), she’s frightened, isn’t sure why she’s still in pain, how long she’s been in the hospital, and doesn’t know why she keeps waking up only to start bleeding all over again. She’s never had a wound that won’t close, and isn’t sure what’s going on. She looks up at Raven, who’s gone as white as a sheet, and she knows it’s bad. She whimpers, just a little, trying to turn her head to look. Raven grabs her hand, shakes her head, and that’s how Clarke knows it’s _bad_.

She’s breathing hard all of a sudden, pain striking up her back, and finally the nurse comes, injects Clarke with whatever she was given last time, and she’s blissfully out of consciousness seconds later.

\--

This time, when Clarke wakes up, there’s a glass of water next to her bed, but no one is nearby. She breathes in, breathes out, realizes she has a cannula in her nose, and that alone worries her. The glass of water is close to her, and when she reaches out to get it, two more drips have joined her IV in her arm, and she is rattled by her lack of information. She is grateful when she’s able to reach the glass without pain, and she looks over at her right side warily. When she sees nothing, she breathes a small sigh of relief.

She is alone for only a minute when her mother comes in. The clear relief on her face reminds Clarke that they are all the other has left, and she is flooded again with fear about what has happened to her. She can feel everything, can move, but she has no idea how long she’s been in the hospital, has no idea why she woke up twice and within minutes was in screaming agony again.

Her mother gives her a wobbly smile and comes to sit next to her. “Clarke, honey. It’s so good to see you.” She gently takes Clarke’s hand, gives it a squeeze. Clarke squeezes back, although who she’s trying to reassure, she’s not sure.

“Mom, what happened? How long have I been here?”

Abby sighs, and all of a sudden, Clarke realizes how tired she looks, how heavily the lines are etched into her face. Clarke has always thought her mother beautiful, but the gravity of their world is a heavy weight on her mother, and she sees it for the first time. “How much do you remember?”

Clarke is swamped all of a sudden with a litany of images: two kaiju circling ArkAngel, fighting them off, chasing… _chasing the rabbit_. She can practically feel herself blanche, realizes that they lost control of ArkAngel because of her, that she put Bellamy in danger, that her mistake, her scarred mind almost got them killed. “I remember the attack, I remember losing the drift,” she says, almost in a whisper. She glances down at their hands, pulls hers back.

Abby looks at her cautiously. If she is offended by Clarke letting go, she doesn’t show it. “You chased the rabbit, from what Raven and Wick were able to tell. Bellamy won’t tell me what happened, so all I know is from the hanger side.”

Clarke is relieved that Bellamy didn’t tell Abby what happened, but she is swamped by shame all over again. There are tears prickling at the corners of her eyes, but she won’t let them fall in the presence of her mother, of her _commander_.

Abby sighs again, clasps her hands together. “The kaiju broke through your right side while you were out of the drift. It did significant damage to ArkAngel, and it tore open your right side. We didn’t know how bad the damage was until Bellamy ran in here with you, shouting and trying to staunch the bleeding.” Clarke can feel her gaze on her, but she refuses to look up, hiding behind the curtain of her hair and trying not to fidget. “It would seem that you came in contact with the kaiju’s blood. Monty and Jasper are still testing it, but their blood may have anti-coagulant properties. There’s no way to know why that is, of course, but it’s caused you to have a very difficult time healing. You’ve had two blood transfusions to try and get your platelet count up, and we’ve only recently been able stop sedating you to keep it from opening up again. Your platelet count is almost normal, so your healing process is finally beginning.”

Clarke looks up at the end, fear written on her face. “Mom – how long have I been here?” She can feel the panic bubbling up inside her, and she’s trying to stifle that, desperately trying to keep a lid on her emotions, but she’s starting to feel her control waver.

“Honey, it’s been three weeks.” Abby looks heartbroken, and Clarke can feel herself shattering. Three weeks they’ve been without another jaeger. She has no idea what’s going on in the outside world, no idea what’s going on with their war, and it’s because of her that they could be losing. She can feel tremors starting in her hands, and she knows she’s going to lose control. If she’s going to do that, though, she wants to be alone.

She looks past her mother’s ear, says “I think I’d like to be alone, now.” She sees her mother’s face crack a little more, but she nods, stands and leaves. She pauses at the door, says “Bellamy is outside. He’s been waiting the whole time. Shall I send him in?”

Clarke shakes her head viciously, her hair flying, tears already starting to fall.

Abby nods and walk out, her head bowed. If her own shoulders are shaking, Clarke is already too blinded by tears to tell.

\--

She stays in the hospital for another week, and she refuses to see anyone but Jackson. Jackson looks at her reproachfully; her mother trained him to deal with combat injuries, and he has always though the sun rose and set on Abby’s orders.

Clarke doesn’t care. She obliges him when he needs her to roll over so he can check her injury, but says nothing to him. She drinks little and eats less; she has no appetite. Occasionally, she catches a glimpse of short dark hair outside her door when he leaves, and every time, she flinches. He shouldn’t be there. He shouldn’t want anything to do with her, the girl who almost got him killed. She is embarrassed at her mistake, at her _weakness_.

She doesn’t speak to anyone, and when she is discharged at night, she walks stealthily to her quarters and closes and locks the door before lying down.

Her back is scabbed over, but she can only lay comfortably on her left side (the irony isn’t lost on her that not even two years ago, she couldn’t lie comfortably except on her _right_ side. She hasn’t looked in the mirror yet to know that she has a matched set, but she can guess).

She lies there for days, eating some of the rations she snuck out of the kitchen weeks ago. They’re stale, and they taste like ash in her mouth, but everything did at the hospital too.

There are occasional knocks on her door, but she never gets up to answer them. She wants to see no one. She is a bruised and battered person, unfit mentally and physically to be a pilot. She occupies a pilot’s quarters, but she interacts with no one. She does not belong, but she has no way of leaving this time.

It is a week into her mourning, pitying solitude that she hears the lock on the door turn, and she sits bolt upright in bed, feeling her dry scabs protest, dragging a sweater over her head before she looks at her intruder.

It’s Octavia, and Clarke scrambles to get away from her, turn away from her.

Octavia looks at her in alarm, fear crossing her fine features when she sees the state of Clarke’s body and soul. She takes a slow step forward, hands up in surrender. She takes another slow step when Clarke doesn’t flinch, tries to hold her ground. If Octavia is going to rip her to shreds for putting Bellamy in danger, it’s nothing more than she deserves. Instead, Octavia walks toward her slowly, not speaking. She reaches toward Clarke, gently touches her hand, then backs away.

If Clarke bursts into tears when Octavia leaves, it’s nobody’s business but her own, since she’s entirely shut herself away from the world.

\--

When she wakes up the next day, salt dried on her cheeks again, she rolls over to find fresh fruit and more ration packs on her floor. There is no one in her room, but Octavia clearly came back after she fell asleep, and Clarke feels guilt and relief rushing through her in equal measure. She is grateful for food, for space, for someone caring for her.

She feels unendingly guilty that the person taking care of her, giving her that space is the person who should hate her for risking her brother’s life.

Still, fruit is fruit, and Clarke hasn’t been eating well in months, and her mouth waters a little at the thought of fresh food. She picks at an orange, eating it slowly until she is full, then drinks some of the water Octavia brought. She breathes slowly, in through her nose, out through her mouth, and for just a second, she feels better.

\--

There is fresh fruit for her every day after that, and a week after she starts getting food regularly, Clarke finally feels less like she wants to die. Her scabs are miraculously not infected, and she can feel her back slowly knitting together. It won’t be whole; the stitches are enough for her to know that it will scar, but she finds that it doesn’t bother her. She already knows that no one in their right mind would let her, broken little thing that she is, pilot a jaeger ever again, and while it breaks her heart a little (so much of her identity is built around fighting, piloting that machine, the machine that occupies a small part of her soul), she can feel herself slowly piecing back together.

She still won’t leave her room, and no one has come to visit her, and she is so grateful. She can’t be anonymous here, and maybe she’s a coward for hiding away, counting on the goodwill of others to keep her alive, but she can’t face the other pilots, the mechanics. She can’t face the world that she was meant to save. It isn’t in the cards for her, and it’s better to be locked away than to put more people in danger.

\--

It is two weeks later when the last of her scabs fall off, and her body has been healing for two months. She’s starting to lose track of how long she’s been back at Eastern. The days bleed together, especially now that she doesn’t have anything to do. She’s unearthed some of her drawing pencils from what she had on the wall, and she’s started drawing on the walls of her room. It keeps her busy, imagining anything that isn’t a kaiju, a jaeger; she doesn’t want to think of the wreckage of the world around them. It’s going down, and there’s nothing she can do, so she might as well do what she can: draw.

She draws space often. She’s heard people say that the ocean is quite a bit like space, both in what scientists don’t know about each place, and that they reflect each other just a bit. There were jokes about the kaiju being aliens for a while, and she supposes they are entirely foreign, but they are born of Hell, not the infinite quiet that she imagines is space. She fills pages with images of space, and it soothes her, quiets the raging fires of her soul. She isn’t normal, she isn’t even close to pieced back together, but here, in this silent, safe space, her level of control over her sanity doesn’t matter.

\--

She’s looking at her back in the mirror, examining the symmetry of her scars, when her door bursts open. She grabs the closest thing off her bed, scurries back.

It’s Octavia this time, but Lincoln is a quiet presence behind her.

“Clarke. It’s time to go out.” Her voice brooks no argument, but Clarke finds herself shaking her head, feels waves of panic and nausea welling up, and she’s walking backwards, bumping into her desk chair, her bed.

Octavia approaches her slowly again, although more quickly than last time. This time, she speaks. “Clarke, it’s been weeks. You haven’t showered. You haven’t seen sunlight. You cannot stay here for the rest of your life. People need you.” She doesn’t say whom, and Clarke doesn’t care. She doesn’t care if her mother needs her, if humanity needs her. Clarke needs her solitude. She can’t hurt anyone where she is now.

Clarke is still shaking her head when Octavia lays a gentle hand on her arm. If she had been fierce, Clarke is sure that she could have kept fighting, but it is the quietness of the gesture that breaks her, and suddenly she’s in Octavia’s arms, weeping. Octavia is gently petting her head, murmuring soothing noises in her ear, and Clarke realizes she has been desperate for human contact, has had no idea how hard it has been to isolate herself.

Octavia, she’s realizing, is speaking in low tones to Lincoln, who is also quietly walking toward Clarke. Clarke looks up at him, and even though she barely knows him, she is soothed by the self-possession he shows. He gently reaches for her, and while Octavia holds one hand, Lincoln gently picks her up, and starts to carry her out the door. Clarke starts to shake her head again, and Octavia soothes her again.

“It’s okay, Clarke. We’re just going to the bathroom. No one’s here right now. But you have to shower. You don’t have to go anywhere else, but you have to do this.” Octavia starts up a quiet song, gently taps the rhythm against Clarke’s knuckles, and she can feel just the tiniest ounce of tension leaving her.

When they reach the women’s bathroom, Lincoln sets her down, and Octavia wraps an arm around her waist, supporting her through the doors. Lincoln gives her what she’s realizing is his trademark smile: quiet and small, but full of support. She nods at him, walks through the doors with Octavia.

Octavia gently helps her get undressed, and says nothing about her scars. Clarke is relieved, and she is even more relieved to step into the shower. She hasn’t showered in too long, and her hair is a greasy, matted mess. It makes her anxious to deal with it, but she starts to shampoo it. When it’s clean, she starts on her body. As she runs her hands over her ribs, she realizes the shocking amount of weight she’s lost. She takes so little notice of her body these days, aside from her pain level, that she’s neglected to notice that, where she was lean and strong, she can now count her ribs, and her muscle mass is almost entirely gone.

It is with a jolt that she realizes that, while she knew she wasn’t eating much, she has been unintentionally starving herself. It brings tears to her eyes, and a level of resolve washes over her. She may not be useful fighting anymore, but she doesn’t want to die, either, and if she’s not going to die, she has to take care of herself.

She finishes washing and steps out of the shower, where Octavia is waiting with a clean towel and clean clothes. Her clothes are apparently nowhere to be found, but Clarke is grateful that the new clothes Octavia has provided are soft and worn, nothing like her jaeger suit.

She grips Octavia’s arm in thanks. She’s not sure why she’s doing this, exactly, but Clarke is so grateful to have someone supporting her. Octavia looks at her, smiles, and says “All right, let’s get this show on the road. Back to bed for you. You need rest, and then some real food.”

When they get to the door, she can hear heated whispers outside, and Octavia blanches for a moment before clearing her throat. The whispers stop, and Clarke can hear the footsteps of someone retreating down the hall. She has a good guess about who they belong to, and she can feel her skin heating up, her eyes shifting quickly to Octavia. She smiles serenely back, and directs her out the door. Lincoln is still waiting there, a scowl on his face. When he sees Clarke, it fades. He offers to carry her, but she declines. She’s walking back to her room if it kills her.

It’s a struggle. She doesn’t realize how weak she’s let herself become in the weeks she’d been in the hospital and then hiding away. She’s gripping Octavia’s arm and sweating when she gets back to her room, but she manages a tense smile at Octavia, and a thank you to both of them before she closes the door and collapses.

 _Tomorrow_ , she thinks. _Tomorrow I start again_.

\--

She can’t face up to it every day. There are days she wallows in her bed, days she doesn’t even touch her drawing pencils, just keeps her head tucked down. Octavia leaves those days, just drops off some real food and plenty of water, and doesn’t bother Clarke. She forces herself to eat as much as she can, which is little on those days, and drink a glass of water before she dozes.

There are other days where she feels trapped inside her room. She wants to move, wants to run. She starts doing push ups and sit ups on her floor, the monotony of training returning to her. She wolfs her food, drinks as much water as Octavia brings. If she or Lincoln have time, she draws them.

Sometimes she draws the interplay of shadow and light on the face of someone else, but she hides those drawings, pretends they don’t exist. She doesn’t want to see him, doesn’t want to imagine the crease in between his eyebrows, the twitch in his jaw. She spent enough time with him to observe this and more, and she simultaneously aches to draw him in real time, and ferociously hides herself away from him. She doesn’t want him to see her weakness, doesn’t want him to look at her with pity after seeing her terror, the worst moments of her life.

She can’t say why she’s trying to get stronger again. She doesn’t want to interact with the world at large, not really. She appreciates the small interactions she has with Octavia and Lincoln, but she doesn’t want to talk to her mother, or any of the other pilots. She is certain she’ll never pilot a jaeger again, can’t tell why she works her body back into shape, sometimes patiently, sometimes with fury. She’s been doing it since she was a child, she guesses. It’s a routine, and if that isn’t a fucked up statement about her life, she doesn’t know what is.

\--

As she starts to feel better, though, the nightmares start. She knows that nightmares are just her body’s way of working through her terror in a way that’s supposed to be more manageable, but she’s pretty sure that waking up screaming, shaking, and sweating isn’t more manageable, especially in a place where screams reverberate.

After a particularly bad one, she’s sitting up, her head in her hands as she relives her father’s death. She’s been awake for fewer than thirty seconds when her door is kicked in and a familiar mop of short dark hair comes screeching to a halt beside her. She looks up at him and startles backwards. She’s sobbing in earnest now, hiccupping with the force of her crying, and he _can’t be here_. He’s leaning toward her, his eyes panicked, and she forces him back, holding him at arm’s length. She can’t deal with this, can’t deal with him seeing her this way. This is how they got into this whole mess and she _can’t_.

It’s only a minute before another head peeks around the corner, this one bald. He glares at Bellamy, gestures for him to get out. He looks at her desperately, then at Lincoln, who is holding the door. He sighs, leaves, and Clarke’s sobbing intensifies. 

Lincoln reaches out, takes her hand. “Clarke. You have to breathe.” His deep voice is quiet, and he starts counting for her, in two three, out two three, again and again until she’s able to match what he’s asking of her. Her sobbing calms, her panic receding at the steady pace of his voice. The tears have stopped falling, and her shaking is subsiding. She finally meets his gaze, wiping her nose. He nods at her, his face calm and reassuring. She doesn’t know how he manages to remain as collected as he does, but she is grateful for his easy presence, solid and steady. He’s still holding her hand, and when she moves to take it back, he lets her.

“Did you know I’m an addict?” He asks, almost conversationally. She startles, looks up at him. He nods. “Yeah. I started using heroin when I was, oh, fifteen or so. I’ve been clean for ten years, but it took me fucking up in the jaeger to deal with it.” Her eyes are intent on him now, and he senses he’s got her attention. “I’m never going to be able to forget what I did, or how I got to that point, but you have to forgive yourself, Clarke. You can’t keep blaming yourself for things that did or didn’t happen. I know you promised Octavia to keep Bellamy safe, but he’s a grown man. He knows what he’s doing, what he’s risking when he climbs into that jaeger. Your dad’s death isn’t your fault, either. You’re still a valuable member of this team, whether you believe it or not. I don’t want to push you, but we could really use you.”

She can tell he’s in earnest, but it’s not like she hasn’t heard it before. “You have no idea what I’ve done, how it feels,” she whispers. “I felt my father _die_. I relive it every other night, and when I’m not reliving that, I’m watching any other person I pilot with experience it with me, and I watch us both die when I can’t control it. I don’t think I can ever get back in a jaeger, because I don’t think I can control the way I feel it.” She can feel the tears starting again, and she’s angry that she can’t control _this_ , either. “I almost got Bellamy killed because I couldn’t control it. I barely know him, I barely like him, but I’ve seen inside him, and I know you know how that feels like. But imagine having to share every one of your insecurities, each of which could cripple you both at any time. It’s terror, pure and simple, every time. There’s no forgiveness I can give myself that will get rid of that fear.”

Lincoln looks at her, steady as always. “You can’t hold onto it all. Bellamy said you were trying to shield him during the neural handshake. Part of being drift compatible is sharing all of it, every single bit. If you don’t know that by now, you’re right: you shouldn’t be a pilot.” He pats her hand. “Think about it. And for heaven’s sake, stop hiding here. You’re not a pariah.”

She glares balefully at his back as he leaves, catches sight of Bellamy in the hall. She meets his eyes for a second before the door swings closed, but it’s long enough for her to catch sight of the longing in his eyes.

She’s not sure what to make of that, but she recognizes that there’s something coiled in her chest, and it threatens to unfurl when she sees him.

\--

She does think about what Lincoln says. She hid very little from her father when they drifted – just her thoughts about boys, which took very little effort to shield. What she hid from Bellamy was huge, a defining part of who she is now. Maybe their neural handshake was bound to falter, if she didn’t give him everything. She was broken before, but she was still solid. Now she’s not sure if she’s anything but fragments.

She starts slipping out of her room at night, running around the indoor track. If it isn’t raining, she’ll sit outside and watch the stars, run a lap around the hanger, then slip back into her room. She doesn’t do it every night, but she can feel the strength returning to her body, can feel the solid thump of her heart, the intake and exhale of her lungs, and she – she is grateful. She still doesn’t know what to do, doesn’t know how to move forward, but she is grateful that she is here, able to see the night sky, count the constellations.

\--

There are still nightmares, and her door gets kicked in again after a particularly vicious one leaves her writhing on the floor. She’s fallen out of her bed, and her side is closed up, but the underlying tissue is screaming out. She is biting her fist to quiet her screams when he runs in, picks her up, and gently deposits her back in her bed. He’s looking at her frantically, trying to figure out what happened, when he takes her hand and uncurls her fingers. “Clarke, you have to talk to me. What happened? What hurts?”

She can’t talk for crying, just gestures to her side. He looks at her, gently probes her back. Even over her shirt, he can feel the muscles clenching, wound tight as a drum. “Okay, easy, easy. I’m going to try and help, okay? I need you to breathe, okay? Can you do that?” She nods, fighting her tears back. She tries to uncurl herself, but cries out again. He smoothes the hair back from her face, then gently digs his fingers into the muscles of her back. She whimpers a little at his touch, but she can feel the difference already. He slowly works the knots out of her back, hands straying over her shirt, and she can feel the muscles relaxing. She slowly works on stretching back out, and when she can move comfortably again, he stops. His hand stays in its spot on her forehead, his thumb holding her hair to the side 

For the first time in months, she feels relaxed, and it’s utterly paradoxical, because she’s spent these long months hiding from him, and now that he’s here, she’s not sure what she’s been doing. Still, the longer she looks up at him, the more she can feel her walls coming back up, closing her off to him. She’s still responsible, and she still put him in danger.

She says nothing, but she sees the recognition in his eyes. He backs away slowly, his hand dropping to his side. “Goodnight, Clarke.”

He turns away, heads toward the door. When he gets there, he hesitates. “I don’t blame you, you know. There’s nothing to blame you for.” He doesn’t turn around, whispers the words to the dark void of her room, but she hears them all the same, and it is everything she can do not to burst into tears again. She’s tired of crying, tired of the nightmares, tired of the guilt, but she can’t stop carrying it.

He shuts the door behind him, and she begins to wonder why, when she thought she hated him, she feels so guilty, so grateful for his forgiveness.

\--

It’s the possible loss of human life, she decides as she’s running the next night. Nothing more, nothing less. She thinks he’s attractive, of course, but she barely knows him, thinks he’s an arrogant asshole eighty percent of the time. She doesn’t want to be Octavia and Lincoln. She’s already lost one of the most important people in her life; she can’t get attached and lose another.

It is as she resolves herself to this that she literally runs into him. Again. This time, he’s grabbing for her arms before she can fall on her ass, and she’s glaring up at him again, some of her old spark back.

He grins, slow and fierce. “Better watch yourself there, Princess.”

She hasn’t heard the nickname in what feels like centuries, but it irritates her all over again. She huffs and steps back from him, noticing for the first time that he’s in his workout clothes. “What are you doing?” she asks, confused.

“I’d say the same thing you are. Enjoying an uncrowded track.” He’s still smiling, and she wants to wipe it right off his face.

“Why now? You can run at any time.” She’s sour; objectively, she knows that the track is open to anyone at any time, but in the weeks since she’s picked up this routine, she’s never encountered anyone else, and it’s been a quiet time for her.

He shrugs. “Been busy.” He ducks his head when she squints at him.

“With what, exactly?” She demands. He can’t be piloting, unless they’ve gotten a new pilot and she’s so out of the loop that she doesn’t know, and she doesn’t know enough about him to know what his other skills are.

“You’re awfully nosy, aren’t you, Princess?” There’s a smirk in his voice again, but also a warning. She doesn’t want to know what he’s warning her against, and all of a sudden, she’s not sure why she cared in the first place. As long as he isn’t at the track to follow her around, push her into piloting again, she doesn’t care.

“I guess I am.” She moves away from him, setting her watch again. “See you around.” She takes off, starting a series of sprints, and tells herself she doesn’t pay attention to whether he watches her or not. (She does. He is.)

\--

They start meeting at the track every couple of nights. It’s an unspoken agreement: they warm up separately, and if she’s doing sprints, he joins her. Some of the time they jog in opposite directions, and if she studies his face when they approach each other, he doesn’t say anything. She gets used to running behind him, admires the movement of his shoulder blades under his shirt, the smooth stride of his legs.

If she goes to bed some of those nights and can’t sleep for reasons that have nothing to do with her fears and nightmares and everything to do with the darkness of his eyes when he brushes the hair out of her face, she doesn’t dwell on it.

One night, several weeks after they’ve started unofficially meeting up, she leads him off the track and outside. When he looks at her in confusion, she gestures for him to follow her, and she leads a run around the hanger. They can see the desolation of the old coastal city further east, but after two miles, she sits down and pats the ground beside her. He sits, and when she stretches out along the ground, he does the same.

“I started coming out here a month or so ago. Sitting in my room got claustrophobic, but here – it’s both bounded and free. I feel safe.”

He chuckles. “You feel safe. A kaiju could spring from the ocean at any moment, make for land, but you feel safe. Only you, Princess.” When he says the nickname this time, he’s looking at her, and there’s a fondness to his exasperation. She’s not sure when the nickname started to be less derisive and more endearing, but she hates it less, now.

“There’s no one here, though. No pressure. Just silence and infinity.” She looks at him, and when she sees the affectionate look on his face, she flushes, turns back to the stars. They barely know each other. She has no idea what’s going on, isn’t even sure if there should be anything going on, if she _wants_ anything to be going on. But.

She appreciates his company. She remembers the gentleness of his hands on her back, the panic in his voice as he fought to calm her, the trust they put in each other when they first drifted. She remembers seeing his memories of a younger Octavia, remembers feeling his anger and confusion from when he first met Lincoln. She remembers very little else, but she remembers the goodness of his soul, the protectiveness that he seemed to embody, that he covered with snideness.

She knows him. She can’t, by the standards of normal people. She can count the number of real conversations they’ve had on her two hands, but drifting means that you learn, understand the fundamental components of someone’s soul. If he had been the person he projected, she doubts she could have drifted with him.

Here, now, she respects his quiet, the solidity of him beside her.

She looks over at him again, at the light of the stars on his face, and she allows herself to feel a surge of affection for this man. She’s broken, and she doesn’t know how to fix herself, but she wonders if he’s willing to take the broken pieces of her and hold them in his hands. She wonders if it’s enough.

And she wonders if she wants to try again. Not just to let someone in, but to try again and pilot. She doesn’t know if the Commander will let her, doesn’t know if it’s wise. Her body is fragile in ways that don’t affect most pilots, but she’s strong enough, getting stronger. And he would be there.

She just has to trust that he’ll stay there, that he’ll take the fragile pieces and guard them.

He looks over at her, and she smiles at him, a smile with real warmth. “Tell me a story,” she says. She curls over toward him, and delights in the surprise and wonder on his face. He points up at the stars, and she cranes her neck to look. He tells the story of Orion, and his hounds Sirius and Percyan. She falls asleep listening to him, doesn’t wake when he carries her back to her bed. He tucks her in, and quietly shuts the door behind him before leaning on it and sighing.

\--

The next day, she wakes up and goes to the mess hall. She has been avoiding this as she’s been avoiding everything else, relying on Octavia and Lincoln to provide her with food, or stealing it at odd hours. She still isn’t eating properly as a result, but she’s been eating better, giving her body what it wants.

If the conversation stops when she walks in, she pretends not to notice. She grabs a tray and some food, and sits down next to Octavia and Lincoln. She ducks her head to eat, doesn’t notice Octavia glaring at everyone, daring them to draw attention to Clarke. They don’t, quickly going back to their conversations and averting their eyes. Clarke smiles a bit into her soup, but says nothing. She and Lincoln and Octavia sit in silence until it is time to leave. They wander further into the hanger, and Clarke wanders back to her room.

She does this every day, at every meal. Her body fills out again, she speaks with Raven, with Monty and Jasper. Bellamy joins them, or he doesn’t. He still joins her on her nightly runs, and they spend more time under the stars. 

It is easy to forget, for now, that there is a war going on, a war that she used to care deeply about, a war where she was an integral soldier.

It is easy to forget until it isn’t.

Over lunch one day, when Clarke is sitting quietly next to Bellamy when the commander’s voice comes over the intercom: “Clarke Griffin, report to medical immediately.” Clarke’s head snaps up, her eyes widening. She glances to Bellamy, and they take off running toward the hospital.

They get there to see Octavia and Lincoln limping in. Clarke is immediately taken back to the last time she was in the hospital, and she is leaning over, trying to remember how to breathe as Bellamy rubs her back when her mother comes barreling up to her, thrusting scrubs in her direction.

When she wasn’t learning how to pilot the jaeger, Clarke picked up medical knowledge from her mother. There were more accidents in those days, when pilots were inexperienced. Now, there are accidents because of the increasing frequency of attacks.

She can see Bellamy glaring at her mother out of the corner of her eye, and she startles when he snaps, “Are you sure that’s a good idea? She’s trying not to have a panic attack right now.”

Abby looks at Bellamy in derision. “She’s been hiding in her room for months, and I need her to use her other training right now. If she can’t pilot, she needs to employ her other skills. It’s harsh, but that’s the way it is.” She looks to Clarke. “I need you to scrub in and come help.”

Bellamy kneels down in front of her as she takes a deep breath. He pushes her hair out of her face. “You can do this, Clarke. I’ll be outside if you need me.” She looks at him, nods, and grabs the scrubs from her mother. He squeezes her hand, then lets her go.

Scrubbing in is remarkably soothing to Clarke, and she wonders if she should be pursuing this, instead of whatever possibly fruitless path she’s on. Her talents have always lain elsewhere, but she can do this with a reasonable amount of skill.

When she steps through the doors, she sees that Octavia is lying down, her left leg propped up. She has a nasty gash along her calf, and Clarke doesn’t want to imagine how it got there. She turns to Jackson, asks “Is she going to have a problem like I did?” She knows what to do if everything’s normal, but she’s never really heard the end of the story about the kaiju blood. She hasn’t asked.

“It’s normal. You can do a normal procedure.” Clarke looks over at Octavia, who’s looking at her with wide eyes. Clarke has never seen her look afraid, and she’s prepared to comfort her immediately. 

“Hey,” she says, trying out a smile. “That’s a good thing. Just a few stitches, and you’ll be right as rain.” Octavia doesn’t look mollified, but she nods, tries out a smile of her own.

“Go for it, doc,” she whispers.

Clarke has to take several deep breaths before she’s able to thread the needle, but she knows that Octavia’s had a local anesthetic administered and she needs to get this done before it wears off. She counts to ten, then turns around toward Octavia’s leg, begins carefully suturing it closed.

Octavia watches her closely. “Our mom was a seamstress, did you know that? She made all sorts of beautiful custom clothes before she died.”

Clarke shakes her head. “I didn’t know. Bellamy never told me.” Now that Octavia mentions it, though, Clarke is drawing upon memories of a woman taller than Octavia, with the same beautiful dark hair. “I’m afraid this is nothing quite so lovely as what she produced, but it’ll keep you going.” She ties off the last suture, snips the thread, and starts setting down bandages. She gently tapes around the wound, then smiles, a real smile this time, at Octavia. “All done,” she says.

Octavia smiles at her. “Thanks, Clarke.”

Clarke smiles a little bashfully this time. “Don’t worry about it. You’ve been nursing me along for months, it’s the least I could do.” She stretches out a hand, pulls Octavia up. “There’s someone outside who’ll be glad to see that you’re okay.”

She opens the door, lets Octavia lean her weight on Clarke as she hobbles out. Bellamy is on them in an instant, wrapping Octavia up in his arms. “O,” he breathes. “You’re okay.” Clarke can see the relief on his face, and suddenly feels like she’s invading on a private moment. She smiles at Bellamy over Octavia’s shoulder, and starts walking away to check on Lincoln.

She can hear them talking in hushed tones behind her, but she hears “category four”, and she can feel her skin tingle. It’s getting worse.

She’s not sure if she can do anything about it, or if she even wants to, but duty has been drilled into her for a lifetime, and she’s not sure she can walk away.

\--

She wanders into mechanical the next day, looks up to see a clean, healed ArkAngel. She looks for Raven, smiles when she sees her. “She looks beautiful again.”

“Yeah, well, no one’s around to mess her up,” Raven says, her soft smile taking the sting out of her words.

Clarke smiles, unoffended. Her mind and her body are probably a long way from whole, but she no longer flinches any time someone says something about her second accident. “Do you have a second?” she asks.

“Sure, what’s up?” Raven wipes her hands on a rag, looks at Clarke.

Clarke bites her lip, then says, “I need you to tell me what’s going on.”

Raven’s eyes widen. She looks around them, then grabs Clarke by the elbow. “You didn’t hear it from me, okay?” Clarke nods, and Raven pulls them away, into a hidden section of mechanical.

Clarke and Raven sit for hours, Raven talking, Clarke listening and biting her lip. It’s so much worse than she thought.

\--

She confronts Bellamy about it immediately afterward, which retrospectively, might have been a bad idea.

“How could you not tell me what’s going on?! You let me learn by stitching Octavia up that there were still casualties, and I had to ask _Raven_ to tell me that we’re weeks from a massive attack!” She throws her hands up in exasperation, glaring at him.

He doesn’t even think twice before stepping into her space, his voice fierce. “I’m sorry, Princess, but in case you hadn’t notice, you’ve only barely stopped being _catatonic_. For a while there, O and I were worried you were actively suicidal, and when it became clear that you weren’t, which thank god for that, we weren’t sure if you’d ever be ready to do anything more than draw and stare off into space.”

She hears his words like a slap, and she’s stepping toward him, rage boiling in her veins. “How _dare_ you. _How dare you_. I though I was going to get you killed. I’ve already gotten someone I love killed, how _dare_ you talk to me about what it’s been like, or talk about me like it’s trivial.” She’s angry, furious even, and for the first time since they sparred, she can feel the singing in her veins again, and she can barely think through the implications, she’s so angry, but she knows, she _knows_ it matters.

“Princess, we weren’t worried about whether you were going to fight or not, we were worried about _you_. You’ve forgotten, in this elaborate world you’ve constructed, that you aren’t the only pilot, not even the only pilot to lose their partner. We wanted to make sure you were going to be fine, fighting or no fighting. If you came back to it, you had to do it because you cared, not because we needed you. You did that once, and it almost wrecked us both.” He’s still angry, she can tell, but there’s an underlying current of desperation.

She suddenly realizes how close they are to one another, and before she even thinks it all the way through, she’s reaching for him, her lips on his, sighing into his mouth because _finally_. She didn’t know she wanted it until it happened, but he’s been there for months now, and even before the accident she wanted him, just for different reasons.

His tongue sweeps across the crease of her lips and she lets him in, catching his groan as he deepens the kiss. She’s carding her hands through his hair, scratching at the base of his neck, and his hands are wandering over her stomach, over her breasts, and she’s pressing toward him, her hips seeking his.

It’s when he pushes her back against the wall that he breaks the kiss, backs up from her. “We can’t do this. Not like this.” His hair is messed and his eyes are wild, but he’s determined.

“Why?” She demands. “I want you. I’m assuming, from your reaction, that you’re not disinterested either.” 

He groans, pushes a hand through his hair. “Clarke, of course I want you. I know everything there is to know about you, all I want is you. But not after arguing about whether you’re piloting or not. That won’t work.”

She glares at him. “Fuck you. That’s the most bullshit excuse I’ve ever heard.”

He glares back. “Oh really? You think your mother will let either of us pilot if she thinks, even for two seconds that we’re involved? You want to fight, to do something again? Then let’s _do it_. But we’re not fucking it up first.”

She hates him a little bit, in this moment. This isn’t the person who’s been with her for most of her worst moments the past couple of months. This is her practical partner, the one from before, who prizes being good at his job at the expense of everything else. She can relate, she supposes, but she’s never wanted her partner, either, never been willing to risk everything for that other kind of connection.

They look at each other for a moment; she is the first to look away, sighing and pulling her hair away from her face. “Fine. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

\--

She starts official training again the next day. She doesn’t talk to her mother about it first, just shows up and starts. She and Bellamy are sparring when the Commander walks in, and the look on Abby’s face makes Clarke want to laugh. If she weren’t busy fighting Bellamy off (if she’s being honest, she’s taking out her anger and frustration on him, and it’s not helping that he’s half naked, it’s not helping at all), she would be laughing.

Abby’s mouth tightens to a thin line, but she says nothing until after training ends. She pulls Clarke aside, says “Clarke, honey, what are you doing?”

“Training to fight. That’s why you brought me here, right? And you need everyone you can get.” Clarke is curt but polite, a soldier addressing her Commander, not a daughter pleading with her mother.

“Clarke, you can’t. You’ve been injured twice, no one’s evaluated you – “

“So have someone evaluate me. Jackson can tell you that my back is functional enough to pilot. Have him do a mental evaluation. I can assure you that I’ll pass.” She sees Bellamy out of the corner of her eye, and he’s smirking. This time, though, it’s reassuring, rather than infuriating. He’s enjoying watching her take on her mom, and it makes her straighten her posture, standing toe to toe with Abby.

“You brought me back to fight. I’m telling you I’m ready. Bellamy will attest to his willingness to drift again. We had an extremely high compatibility score; I don’t think you can afford to waste that right now.”

Abby looks taken aback at Clarke’s honesty and her borderline hostility, but she says “I will set up an appointment for you. You may keep training in the mean time, but don’t even think about setting foot in a jaeger until I clear you.”

Clarke doesn’t jump for joy. She doesn’t do anything but offer a tight smile and a nod. She doesn’t want to go in the jaeger until she has to. 

\--

She’s evaluated, and she doesn’t pass with flying colors, but she passes. (There’s a caveat, and it’s that she attend bi-weekly therapy. She shrugs, says yes). She’s approved the next day. 

She and Bellamy stand looking up at ArkAngel, and she reaches for his hand. He looks at her, and she shrugs. “I’m not pulling any silly business. Just holding your hand, like we’ve done countless times in other situations.”

He ducks his head, but she can see the small smile on his face.

They climb into the pilot seats, but they trade this time. Clarke piloted the left side her whole life, and she’s ready to return to it. Bellamy seems comfortable left or right, has no qualms about giving her the other side.

They visit ArkAngel every day. They don’t drift for another week, but Clarke can tell that the situation is getting increasingly dire, and she asks Bellamy if he thinks they’re ready. He nods, and Raven sets it up with Abby. The neural handshake is stronger this time, Clarke can tell. She watches Bellamy’s memories pass her by, sees their mom, hears “Your sister, your responsibility”, which she doesn’t remember from the first time.

They share everything, down to Clarke’s overwhelming sense of guilt over her father, and subsequently, over endangering Bellamy.

When they climb down, he draws her into his arms, holds her close, breathes her in.

That night, he curls himself around her for the first time, and she sleeps dreamlessly.

\--

When she wakes, it is to him tracing the outlines of her scars through her thin shirt.

“It looks like you have wings,” he says, and she can hear the awe in his voice. She’s never appreciated her scars; they are remnants of horrible injuries, horrible traumas, and she wishes she didn’t have them. To hear the reverence in his voice makes her shiver, heats her blood. He presses a kiss to the back of her neck, and she turns toward him, meeting his heated stare.

They aren’t doing anything. But he looks at her, and she can feel longing crawling up her spine. She curls her hand in his hair, watches his eyes darken, and delights in the response she draws from him.

They are still staring at each other when the alarm goes off.

They were cleared to fight after establishing the neural handshake, which means they’re on deck today.

They race to ArkAngel, getting details as they go. It’s a category four, and Octavia and Lincoln are going with them.

They launch, and Clarke reminds herself to stay centered. Bellamy glances over at her, and when she catches his eye, she knows: this is doable.

And it is. It’s a wily one, and she’s never fought a category four. Between the four of them, however, they corner it and take it out, quickly stepping away from its dying ooze. It makes Clarke vaguely queasy to be even this close to its blood after it made it so difficult for her to heal, but she stands her ground.

She is swept up in a hug by Octavia when they get out of the jaegers, and for the first time in two years, she thinks this is home.

\--

They fight three kaijus in one week, and she is exhausted. It’s getting worse, the timing is getting closer together, and she knows that Monty and Jasper are frantically trying to understand why, all of a sudden, the attacks are coming closer together, and why higher category kaijus are emerging regularly.

She knows that all of the pilots around them are exhausted; everyone is eating more, but there’s little time for rest, and everyone has dark circles under their eyes. Bellamy’s skin is getting paler under the lack of sleep, and his freckles stand out more against his suddenly whiter skin. She hates being this tired, but she loves tracing his freckles with her eyes when he sits across from her at meals. Whenever he catches her staring, he crinkles his nose, ruins the effect, and she rolls her eyes at him.

She is in his bed every night, and it stays innocent, the two of them curled around each other, staying warm, resting whenever possible, but she wakes to his erection pressed against her every morning, and she longs to act on the desire she feels building in her body.

In the few quiet moments she has, she wonders how they’ve managed to come this far, how they’ve moved from disdain and sneering and anger to this precious _thing_ they’ve got, something that needs to be protected and sheltered. She’s not sure if she loves him, but she thinks she could, and it’s the most terrifying, electrifying feeling.

And they don’t talk about it; they both know they could be living on borrowed time, and while under any other circumstances, that might mean acting with fervor, speaking important truths – well, they are so tired, and they share so much through the drift, and they know, even if they don’t speak aloud, that there are powerful feelings between them.

\--

They learn, within a matter of hours, that the kaiju have been planning, if they’re cogent enough to do so, to overpower the breach and send forth the strongest. It’s been a pre-colonization mission: weaken the natives until their resources are drained, then settle. It’s the oldest trick in the book, but it’s taken them years to finally understand what’s going on, and Bellamy’s face is white with distress when he meets Clarke’s eyes on hearing the news.

Jasper has a handkerchief pressed to his nose to stop the bleeding from drifting with the dead kaiju, and Monty is looking at him with a mixture of exasperation and respect, and the Commander looks torn between glaring at both of them, and ushering them off to medical to be seen to.

Finally, the Commander turns around, meets her daughter’s eyes, and looks at the assembled crowd. Octavia, Lincoln, Clarke, and Bellamy are all suited up, waiting for orders. There are one or two other pairs, but many of their pilots have ended up in medical in the last month with serious injuries, and the Commander can’t ask them to pilot now, even with all the urgency at hand.

“We’re going to move to strike them at the source,” she says finally, having looked over her troops. “We’re taking a nuclear warhead to the breach, and we’re going to detonate it.”

Clarke gasps, and Bellamy instantly takes her hand. Previous efforts had used nuclear warfare on the kaiju to no effect. But bombing the breach – if it were open, it could annihilate the kaiju. 

The Commander raises her hand for silence over the whispers and mutters that have broken out among everyone assembled. “Jasper and Monty have discovered that only the kaiju can open the breach. The breach recognizes a portion of their DNA and opens accordingly. We will wait until the next kaiju comes through, and take it alive. This will be a multi-pronged attack, and I need everyone assembled here to be ready. It will take all of us to accomplish this.”

“How long until the next attack?” Lincoln asks.

“Our best guess is two hours,” Abby answers. “I suggest you rest, and be ready at 0800.” She looks at the assembled crowd, nods. “Humanity is relying on us, whether they believe it or not. This is our task, and we must rise to it. I have faith in each and every one of you. Dismissed.”

Pilots slowly move out of the room until just Octavia, Bellamy, Lincoln, and Clarke are left. They look at each other, and finally, Octavia asks, “Who’s going to carry the bomb?” Her voice shakes, just a little, at the end.

The four of them share a look. Carrying the bomb is a death sentence, and none of them want it. For passively trying to die for months at end, Clarke finds that she is suddenly very invested in living, in exploring her future, with Bellamy and independent of him.

Lincoln wraps his arm around Octavia, and the four of them separate. Clarke grabs Bellamy’s hand and leads him outside, to what has become their spot outside the hanger. The sky is just beginning to lighten, traces of pink edging out against the blue sky. They lie down, side by side, hands clasped, and it is a tenuous feeling of peace that she feels, but for this moment, she’ll take it. They could be walking, fighting to their deaths in mere hours, and she wants nothing but this.

She feels it when he turns his head, eyes on her. She keeps her eyes on the sky for another few minutes, watches the last traces of the sunrise leave the sky, then rolls over onto her side to catch his eye. She reaches out tentatively, brushes some of his hair off his face, and it’s not the first time she’s touched him like this, but it could be the last, and she is so full of trust and love for this man, this man who started out meaning less than nothing to her, and who she trusts with her body and her soul every day. She suddenly, very desperately doesn’t want this to be the last time she gets to do this with him.

He reaches out and catches her wrist with one hand, and he must have caught on to her mood, because he brushes his lips across her knuckles, on the underside of her wrist, and he holds her gaze and says, “Whatever happens here, you should just know – “

And she’s brushing her finger along her lips, silencing him. “I know, Bell. I know.” She doesn’t want him to say anything he doesn’t mean just because they could die. What they feel for each other seems worlds beyond what she ever imagined romantic love could feel like anyway, and she does – she’s been inside his head, she _knows_.

She’s reaching for him then, her lips brushing against his, and she sighs into his mouth. They still can’t do _this_ , either, especially not right before they go into what is probably the most important battle ever, but she’s heartbroken to think that, for the first time, there might not be the promise of _someday_.

She presses kisses along his jaw, along his neck and his collarbone, reveling in him, his body, his strength. The strength that has allowed them to pilot a jaeger, yes, but also the strength that has allowed her space and time to heal, that occasionally still holds the fragile pieces of her together, until she’s ready to take the burden again. One of her hands presses on his heart, listening to the reassuring beat, and she is overwhelmed by the reality that they are _here_ , and the world is ending, but they are together, and she can’t imagine anyone else that she’d rather face it with.

When she pauses in her kisses, he takes over, pressing kisses along her throat until he reaches her neck, and when he bites ever so slightly, she gasps, her hips jumping and colliding with his. She grinds against him for a just a second before she’s pulling back, breathing heavily and looking at him. His eyes are hooded, pupils dark, and he’s staring at her like she’s the earth, like the sun rises and sets on her. She wants nothing more than to crash into him right now, but he sighs and pulls away, and she rolls onto her back, trying to catch her breath. She threads her fingers through his once again, pulls his hand to her lips for a kiss, meets his eyes again with a soft smile.

They stay that way for another hour, and when Lincoln and Octavia come out and settle down beside them, Clarke feels like her world is full, and isn’t it only suitable that it’s about it go up in flames.

\--

It’s not hard, putting on a jaeger suit, but they help each other anyway. They have very little time left together, but when he’d tugged on her hand when she tried to separate from him, she was grateful. Now, bare in front of him, letting him attach the Kevlar plates in the right places and adjusting the zippers, she is humbled by the care he’s showing in making sure she is prepared. He cards his fingers through her long hair, presses a kiss to her neck, and turns her around.

She lays a hand against his cheek, then slowly begins the process of suiting him up. As he did, she takes the opportunity to run her hands carefully along the length of his spine, across the breadth of his shoulders. When he is ready, she stands in front of him again, presses a kiss to his lips, and backs away. She braids her hair back, and they are ready. Hand in hand, they walk down the hallway, following Lincoln and Octavia in front of them.

When they get into the hanger, she is startled by the sight of her mother in a jaeger suit. She knew that Abby piloted in the past; there was no way to become Commander without piloting at some point, but she hasn’t been in a jaeger in years, and Clarke suddenly looks around to find who her partner is. And it’s Jaha, of course it is; his partner was badly injured in the last attack, and he’s been piloting as long as Clarke has been alive. Any mention of retirement is met with resistance, but she knows, as they all do, that exposure to that much radiation almost guarantees ill-health in the long term. And knowing this, she looks back to her mother, panic in her eyes.

She feels like she’s only just gotten her back, and she knows – they will be the ones to carry the bomb.

She squeezes Bellamy’s hand, then walks to her mother. “Mom?” She asks, her voice quavering.

Abby meets her gaze, tears already in her eyes. “I couldn’t ask anyone else, Clarke. We’re doing this to give people the chance to _live._ That’s all I want for you, too.” She lays her hand on Clarke’s cheek, brushes away the tears that are silently falling. “I love you, Clarke. It’s time for us, all of us, to do our duty.” She hugs her fiercely, then nods in the direction of Bellamy, who’s been watching their interaction with concern. “Take care of each other.” Clarke meets her mother’s gaze one more time, and Abby nods, smiles, and turns around.

Clarke’s suddenly heavy feet take her back to Bellamy, and she can read the concern on his features when she looks up at him. “She’s dropping the bomb,” she whispers. “She didn’t want to ask anyone else.” Her eyes are dry now, but her voice cracks on the last word, and Bellamy’s arms are around her before she can protest. She presses her face against his chest, gives herself a moment before she pulls away. She doesn’t let go of his hand, but she faces forward when her mother speaks.

“It’s time. Jaha and I will be carrying the bomb to the breach. Bellamy and Clarke will be defending our left side, and Octavia and Lincoln will be defending the right. Whatever happens, do not, I repeat _do not_ interfere with the bomb drop. This is our only chance.” She looks around, and suddenly, Clarke feels a hand grasp her free hand. Octavia is looking forward at the Commander, just as Clarke is, but she’s grasped and held onto her hand, and Clarke feels a rush of affection for this woman, who has never failed to believe in her, who has put her back together, and put her trust in her time and again. If Clarke loves Bellamy, she loves his sister no less, only differently. Her second chance at life may not be certain, but its short time so far has been a blessing.

Abby speaks again: “It’s been a pleasure, working with all of you. Now, let’s go and end this.” She turns around, nods at Jaha, and each team moves toward their jaegers. Octavia throws her arms around Bellamy, then around Clarke, and with no further words, they are separating.

As they climb into the pilot seats, Bellamy and Clarke share one last look, and she’s warmed by the warmth in his eyes. She gives him a smile, a nod, and they face front again.

The chopper ride out to the dropsite is short, and when they drop, Clarke is ready, feels the singing in her veins that signals a good drift. She doesn’t know what’s going to happen, but she knows they’re going out fighting for humanity, and she believes in that, has trained for that her whole life.

They are walking underwater, moving slowly toward the breach, when the first kaiju attacks. They hold it off, trying not to damage it too much. They’ll need it to open the breach, and if Monty and Jasper are right, it might work to only have part of the kaiju, but it will be better if they can throw the whole thing in to get it to open.

It’s when they’re holding it off that another attacks the Commander and Jaha, and Octavia and Lincoln are lunging for it, trying to get it off their flank, away from the bomb.

It’s a whirlwind after that, Bellamy and Clarke fighting in tandem, watching only when they have a moment to make sure Octavia and Lincoln are okay, making sure the Commander is still making progress toward the breach.

Clarke is starting to feel tired, and she knows they haven’t been fighting for that long, but she’s also been fighting her _whole life_ , and this is the last thing she has to do before she rests, but it’s not going as well as they need it to, and that’s when the third kaiju comes out of the breach, and suddenly there aren’t enough of them to keep the kaiju away from the bomb, and now it’s not about keeping one of the kaiju alive, it’s about keeping each _other_ alive, long enough to get this done and find out if they live long enough to reap the benefits.

She can’t look at Bellamy right now, but she hopes he feels how much she trusts him when they start attacking the kaiju in earnest. They need this, and she wants to get out this so badly, wants to start something with him, wants that chance, and they are fighting for that right now, and it’s literally all she can see.

Finally, finally, they take out the first kaiju that came out of the breach, and when they check on Octavia and Lincoln, they’re still holding theirs at bay. Abby and Jaha, though, are struggling, and it’s without a second thought that they are running toward them, thrashing the kaiju away from the bomb and holding on to it. They are so close to the breach, and all they need is to send it back down, open the passage, and Clarke can feel the pull in her back, both sets of scars starting to complain at the work, but they _cannot_ let go. She wills herself to fight back the pain, knows without a doubt that Bellamy feels it too, and they can’t afford it right now, can’t afford it ever.

The kaiju is raking at ArkAngel, and while they’re trying to give a good as they get, they aren’t doing a great job, and when its tail smashes at ArkAngel’s back, Clarke can feel them losing their grip on it. As it slips past their grasp, she digs the fingers of the jaeger in, rips open the flesh of the kaiju, and even though they’re underwater, she can hear it scream in pain, and she’s grimly satisfied. It whips back around, heading toward them once again, and they reach out together, slamming into it and getting it back in their grasp again, and they are trying to suffocate it, at this point, at least get it to lose consciousness so they can throw it into the breach, but it’s thrashing wildly in their grip still, and they are running toward the Commander and Jaha, trying to buy themselves time.

When the kaiju tries to wiggle away from them, Clarke tries smashing it on the head, and when its blood spurts out, she knows that it isn’t dead, isn’t subdued, but is even more enraged, and it gets away from them again, shoots straight toward the Commander as if it knew to try that. And Clarke is yelling, and they’re running, but the kaiju slams into Abby and Jaha, and they aren’t quick to get up. The kaiju is doing the same thing it did to ArkAngel, raking its wickedly sharp claws along the back of the Commander’s jaeger, and Clarke is suddenly certain that water is pouring into the jaeger, and she knows, with a sudden clarity: if this is going to work, she’s going to have to throw her mother into the breach, is going to have to forcibly part with her, because she and Jaha might not survive long enough to make it to the breach.

Her moment of horrified clarity is shared across the drift, and she can feel Bellamy’s answering horror, and he’s turning, suddenly, looking at her, and she nods grimly. They have to.

They reach the kaiju in time to realize that yes, there is water pouring into the Commander’s jaeger, and it’s staggering upright, but it can’t stay that way. It’s limping toward the breach as Clarke and Bellamy try to subdue to the kaiju enough to throw it back to Hell, but it lands a solid rake along their side, and Clarke is suddenly worried about their ability to finish this fight.

They’re finally close enough to the breach, and it is everything in their power to smash the jaw of the kaiju and drop it in as the Commander’s jaeger stumbles toward the walls of the subterranean valley. It stops, suddenly, and Clarke hears her mother across the coms, saying “Clarke, honey, you’ll always be able to find me in the drift,” before trailing off, and there are tears pouring down Clarke’s face, but she and Bellamy drop the kaiju, and when Jasper yells across the com that it’s time, they pick up the Commander’s jaeger and drop it in as well.

The problem now is that they have to get out of there as fast as possible, and Octavia and Lincoln aren’t done fighting. Their kaiju continues to resist, and the two of them are clearly exhausted. Their jaeger is sparking, showing clear signs of malfunction, and Clarke can feel Bellamy’s desperation to get his sister to the surface, to safety. They rush toward them, and between the four of them, they’re able to dispatch the kaiju, possibly the last kaiju any of them will ever see, and as they finish it off, they also realize that the bomb hasn’t detonated.

Clarke frantically calls across the line to Jasper, and when he says that it should have blown by now, she and Bellamy share a look. ArkAngel is nuclear, one of the last, and they can set it to blow. They tell Lincoln and Octavia to get to the hanger, that they will stay and take care of this.

Heavy-hearted, they turn and walk back toward the breach. There is water welling up in the pilot seats now, and it is slow-going toward the breach. They have to pray it’s still open, that this will still work, but Monty’s encouraging them across the com now, telling them it’s still going to work. When they get to the rim, Clarke looks to Bellamy.

“You go,” she says. “I know ArkAngel better than anyone except Raven. I’ll meet you at the surface.” Bellamy’s shaking his head already, but she glares at him. “Octavia would never forgive me if I let you do this. You’re going. I will meet you there.” She reiterates the last fiercely. She wants nothing more than to bail, but this is her _duty_ , she lost both of her parents to this completely bizarre and absolutely shitty war, and she will not lose another person she loves to it.

He looks at her, nods slowly, and allows the escape pod to enclose him. He presses his hand against the hard plastic, and when she nods, he presses the button to go.

She watches as he ejects, then looks around. She’s knee-deep in water at this point, and things are starting to malfunction. If she doesn’t get this done soon, she’ll be as good as dead, and she might be anyway, but she’ll be damned if she goes without one last fight. She moves throughout the pilot station, flipping the override switch to off, and it’s only as the water is getting too high that she sets the jaeger to move over the edge and into the breach. This is the terrifying moment, where she’s still in a malfunctioning jaeger, on her way to hell, and she can only trust that she can get to the escape pod fast enough. 

She’s losing oxygen by the time she gets there, but she has the last seconds of consciousness that allow her to eject, and if she passes out afterward, she’s also certain that ArkAngel will detonate, and this will be over for whomever is still alive to see it.

She’s done her duty, performed her last act for the good of humanity.

\--

When she comes to, she’s back in the hospital, heavy weight pressing against her back, and it takes her several moments of panicked breathing before she realizes that her back isn’t hurting, that someone is curled around her, and yes, she has a drip in one arm, but it’s only one. She’s not back where she was.

She turns slowly, smiles when she recognizes the face she’s looking into. He’s fine, and she might be in the hospital, but all indications point to her also being fine. She brushes her hand across his face, and when his eyelashes flutter, she feels a burst of joy in her heart.

“Hey, Princess,” he says, a slow smile on his lips. She crosses the distance and kisses him, suddenly desperate, and so, so relieved that they’ve made it.

When she pulls back, they’re both breathing hard, and she can feel the flush across her cheeks, but they’re _alive_. 

When the door swings open, revealing Octavia with an arm in a sling, Clarke flings out an arm and grabs Octavia’s hand, squeezing it hard. Octavia smiles, turns around and ushers Lincoln in, and this, this is her family. It isn’t what she expected when she was younger, with her parents, and it tugs at her, the fresh loss of her mother, but this is another family, and it was what her mother fought and died to give her.

When Octavia turns back, Clarke’s face is expectant, and Octavia grins: “We did it. Monty says the breach is sealed.”

Finally, after years of fighting, Clarke knows: she is home, and they are _free_ , and there is a _future_.


End file.
